Something about a crying emoji seems like it trivializes the event. I know the smiley was their mascot or whatever, but it still doesn’t seem genuine at face value.
op said they were given out to associates, doesn’t seem these were for sale. not sure how making their mascot cry instead of smile and giving it to employees is an issue or not genuine.
Yeah I mean emojis weren’t even really a thing in 2001. Closest we had would’ve been like :’(. This would be like making a pin of Ronald McDonald crying which also sounds absurd but we really went collectively insane with 9/11 though. We even had Dr Doom crying in the aftermath and for some reason renamed our foods freedom fries and freedom toast because France wouldn’t help us invade Afghanistan.
Not just Marvel, but DC, and all the big players had 9/11 references. Even at the time I didn't like that though. I was a comic reader at the time and felt it was crass, but I was also nearly 22 years old when the comics were hitting the stands. But the collective lost their minds is underselling it. The bootleg Gameboy games, the terrorist trading cards, etc. The whole country, and world, just sort of went nuts.
Emoji weren't a thing here yet, but Japan's major mobile carrier had already created them. But displaying emoticons as yellow face icons in Internet chat was already a thing a couple years before that. The idea of a yellow smiley itself goes back to the 60s
What I'm surprised by is that both emoticons and kaomoji date to the 80s.
It’s absolutely not genuine. Just like the conservatives that scream “never forgot” while wearing their commemorative 9/11 Trump branded US flag underwear. They don’t give a flying fuck about anyone that died that day, or any of the soldiers or civilians that died in the wars that followed.
To them, 9/11 is just a vehicle and excuse for their xenophobic jingoism.
I will give them a bit of grace that in 2001 "emojis" weren't what they are today. People might see a yellow smiley face and think "Walmart" before they think "texting and social media" but that being said it is still definitely tacky and trivializing.
Emojis weren't really a thing back then like they are now. We had emoticons, and this wasn't actually an emoticon, this was the old Walmart logo. Yes. It was a smile face.
It's not a crying emoji, tho. This predates them from 1990 and this one was in 2001. You only think that because emojis are heavily ingrained into our culture now
that’s funny as fuck. I choose to laugh about peripheral things like this that are a result of large scale tragedies. i was 11 and that day was the start of an anxiety disorder that continues to plague me. I can laugh or have a panic attack so I’m gonna attempt to laugh
I fucking love this. You have to be in the Office Space mindset of the 90s, at the #1 shitty organization that abuses employees and pushes psycho corporate propaganda... and they are obsessed with pins, like you get a new role, a $0.15 raise, and a pin to celebrate. Like, wear your flair and be happy for the customers, do the squiggle dance, and they make this shit after 9000 people die.
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u/Beavshak 55m ago
Something about a crying emoji seems like it trivializes the event. I know the smiley was their mascot or whatever, but it still doesn’t seem genuine at face value.